IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 215 



would be rare indeed amongst savages, where marriages 

 would be owing- to almost anything rather than to con- 

 geniality of mind between the spouses. Mr. Wallace tells 

 us/ that they choose their wives for " rude health and 

 physical beauty," and this is just what might be naturally 

 supposed. Again, we must bear in mind the necessity 

 there is that many individuals should be similarly and 

 simultaneously affected with this aversion from con- 

 sanguineous unions ; as we have seen, in the second 

 chapter, how infallibly variations presented by only a few 

 individuals tend to be eliminated by mere force of num- 

 bers. Mr. Darwin indeed would throw back this aversion, 

 if possible, to a pre-human period ; since he speculates as 

 to whether the gorillas or orang-utans, in effecting their 

 matrimonial relations, show any tendency to respect the 

 prohibited degrees of affinity.^ Xo tittle of evidence, 

 however, has yet been adduced pointing in this direction ; 

 though, surely, if it were of such importance and efficiency 

 as to result (througli the aid of " Xatural Selection " alone) 

 in that " abhorrence " before spoken of, we might expect 

 to be able to detect unmistakeable evidence of its incipient 

 stages. On the contrary, as regards the ordinary apes (for 

 with regard to the highest there is no evidence of the 

 kind) as we see them in confinement, it would be difficult 

 to name any animals less restricted, by even a generic bar, 

 in the gratification of the sexual instinct. And although 

 the conditions under which they have been observed are 

 abnormal, yet these are hardly the animals to present us, 

 in a state of nature, with an extraordinary and exceptional 

 sensitiveness in such matters. 



1 "Natural Selection," p. 3.')0. 



^ " Auimals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii. 



